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Cost for Rutgers scandals at $2.3M and counting

For all of the money Rutgers has spent trying to quell a series of controversies that continue to embarrass the school, 95 New Jersey students could have received a full scholarship for one year at the school

For all of the money Rutgers has spent trying to quell a series of controversies that continue to embarrass the school, 95 New Jersey students could have received a full scholarship for one year at the state university.

Rutgers has spent at least $2.3 million on the scandals — a figure that includes settlements, search firms and crisis management consultants.

And while that money isn't coming out of the same pool as scholarships for a university that costs $24,400 annually for in-state students, it's still an added cost for the publicly funded institution with an athletics department that already is the second-most subsidized in the nation.

The figures, which will undoubtedly increase, include:

- $1.2 million settlement agreement for Tim Pernetti to resign as athletics director amid the fallout of the men's basketball scandal.

- $475,000 settlement for Mike Rice, who was fired April 2 after a videotape showed the Scarlet Knights men's basketball coach physically abusing and berating his players in practice. While the university saved more than half of the approximately $1.1 million it was expected to owe Rice when school President Robert L. Barchi fired the coach, it was debated by legal experts that Rutgers shouldn't been obligated to pay Rice anything considering the clause in his contract that stipulated his contract could've been terminated for "conduct tending to bring shame or disgrace to the university."

- $420,000 payout to general counsel John Wolf, who was pressured to resign for his role in advising the university to suspend rather than fire Rice in December.

- $150,000 to Hill + Knowlton Strategies, a crisis management firm hired in the wake of the Rice scandal.

- $70,000 paid to Parker Executive Search, a firm the university employed to identify candidates and perform background checks during a six-week search that resulted in the appointment of embattled incoming AD Julie Hermann.

The $2.3 million doesn't include the $575-an-hour rate the university has agreed to pay the law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom to conduct an independent review of its basketball coaching scandal.

And it also doesn't account for the unknown legal fees the university will have to pay to handle the Eric Murdock lawsuit.

Prior to the recent controversy stemming from indiscretions in Hermann's past, state officials already were critical of Rutgers' expenditures to cover the Rice scandal.

Barchi last month spoke before an Assembly Budget Committee and was pressed by legislators on the lucrative buyouts ousted Rutgers athletics officials received on their way out the door.

"Funding for higher education is precious, and to see it flittered away like this is disappointing and disturbing," Assemblywoman Bonnie Watson-Coleman, D-Mercer, said at the April 18 hearing.

Assemblyman John Burzichelli, D-Gloucester/Cumberland/Salem, however, said Thursday that Barchi "assured us that all the money associated with this was going to be absorbed through operating budgets and not find its way to tuition."

While there would always be money spent on the positions of AD and head coach, the current posts now carry a price tag of $1.34 million annually as opposed to a combined $1.1 million Rice and Pernetti would've earned next year.

Assemblyman John F. McKeon, D-27th District, who Thursday called for legislative hearings on what he termed "the unfolding series of scandals in the Rutgers athletic department," said it is impossible to calculate the cost of what Rutgers will spend when the dust finally settles on the saddest chapter in Scarlet Knights history.

"Look, a dollar wasted, especially with the challenges of higher education, is a dollar too much," McKeon said. "But that is almost a secondary issue to the effect that this could have on the reputation of the school, to students who may no longer be as attractive in the hiring world because of the public-relations toll the Rutgers degree may take. I mean, what does the reputation of Rutgers mean to the state? I'd say it's priceless."

Keith Sargeant also writes for the Asbury Park (N.J.) Press, a Gannett property